SA1002 Ways of Thinking - Tutorial/Essay Readings 2016-17 Archived
-
Tutorial 1 - MW 1 itemWhat is surprising about the ways in which the Emberá dress and undress? What factors have shaped Emberá clothing? How has the use of Emberá clothing been culturally and historically constructed? What do words like "traditional", "exotic" and "authentic" mean? What differences do these words imply and what kinds of thinking are connected to these understandings?
-
Tutorial 2 - MH 5 itemsIn this tutorial we will take the discussion further by considering the issue of hydraulic fracturing, which is a technology that enables the extraction of oil and natural gas from previously inaccessible deposits. Of particular interest for this tutorial is the ability to drill horizontally for more than a mile underneath the ground. This means that above ground there might be agricultural fields (as in the article below), National Parks (as in the UK) or even schools and airports (as in Texas). To what extent do you feel that this 'mixing' of industrial and other environments is problematic? If it is 'matter out of place', what cultural understandings of place, purity and purpose underpin your discomfort? And if it is just necessary extraction, what cultural understandings underpin your ease?
-
Chapter Read pp. 36-50 (in particular pp. 45-50). Digitisation of pp, 42-58 available in tutorial 3 readings. Additional extracts can also be read online via Google Books.
Supplementary:
-
Fracking under national parks backed by MPs - 2015
Webpage
-
Tutorial 3 - MH 6 itemsFor this tutorial we will be exploring alternative lifestyles of low carbon living and the kinds of assumptions that undergird these experiments. One experiment is the 100 Days Without Oil carried out by a 25 year-old woman in the US. Her goal was to understand the extent of oil dependence in American society today and use that understanding to identify the many systems that will have to be modified in a world without cheap oil. From watching her film and reading her blog, consider the extent to which such an experiment (as well as those described in the Slower Homes chapter) highlights local histories and cultural practices. How is energy and energy use culturally mediated? Do people cross-culturally face similar predicaments when there is no longer an abundance of cheap oil? And how do you think people's economic lives will look in the future?
-
Slower Homes - ,
Chapter Ch. 9:in 'Off the Grid: Re-assembling Domestic Life', pp. 141-158
-
Website
Supplementary:
-
Eco-homes: people, place and politics - 2016
Book
-
An Anthropology of Electricity from the Global South - 2015
Article
-
-
Tutorial 4 - RD 3 itemsDiscussion of symbolist approach to food taboos. To what extent can food taboos be interpreted as evidence of a symbolic capacity in humans for social and cosmological ordering?
-
Purity and danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo - 1984
Book Chapter 3, 'The Abominations of Leviticus'
-
The traveller-gypsies - 1983
Book Chapter 6.
-
Cultural anthropology: a contemporary perspective - , 1998
Book R. Keesing and A. Strathern, Cultural Anthropology (3rd edition), pp.104-125 for a critique of cultural materialist explanation of food taboos, and pp.312-316 for a commentary on Douglas’s work.
-
-
Tutorial 5 - RD 2 itemsDiscussion of various representations of time, or how time is given shape, in relation to differing sets of social activities.
-
Two essays concerning the symbolic representation of time -
Chapter In E. Leach, Rethinking Anthropology (1961). Reprinted in W. Lessa and E. Vogt, Reader in Comparative Religion (1979), pp. 220-229.
-
Simple reproduction and cyclical time -
Chapter pp. 8-29 in Bourdieu, 'Algeria 1960: Essays'
-
-
Tutorial 6 - SH 3 itemsWhat is Benjamin Whorf’s hypothesis about language (the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis)? What is Noam Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar? How does Daniel Everett’s analysis of the Piraha language challenge Chomsky’s view of language? If Everett is correct, what are the implications of the loss of linguistic diversity around the globe for our understanding of human diversity? How does Webster defend a soft linguistic relativism?
-
The Interpreter: Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language? - April 16, 2007
Article
-
Tutorial 7 - SH 3 itemsWhat is “writing”? Is it necessarily phonetic? How does Boone define writing? What is her typology of writing throughout indigenous America? What does Adams mean by the “Inka paradox”? How do Inka khipus fit into our understanding of Amerindian communication systems? If we consider only phonetic graphic systems to be “writing”, are we distorting the nature of Amerindian graphic communication? Why does Boone believe that historians and anthropologists must consult histories that “are painted, knotted, and threaded”?
-
Tutorial 8 - TC 2 itemsWhat might a Pacific view of climate change look like? The low lying atolls and islands of the Pacific are in the frontline of rising sea levels due to global warming. Some of the region's peoples have become the first climate change refugees, and some governments are making provisions for having to relocate populations. But for peoples whose connection to the land and ancestor is integral to their being, moving away from the land is easier said than done: some of the Carteret islanders returned from temporary relocation in Bougainville. What issues do Pacific Islanders face as a consequence of climate change? How have Pacific peoples received and interpreted global narratives about island loss and mass migration? Does climate change also stand for wider social and economic problems caused by globalisation? How does the Pacific balance vernacular explanations of climate change in terms of cultural and Biblical narratives when it portrays the impacts of global warming and engages scientific explanations of climate change?
-
Eco-theological Responses to Climate Change in Oceania - , 2016
Article
-
-
Tutorial 9 - TC 2 itemsHulme argues that 'climate change is not “a problem” waiting for “a solution”. It is an environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping the way we think about ourselves, about our societies and about humanity’s place on Earth'. Why is it then, that taking seriously vernacular conceptualisations and cultural histories (whether Pacific or Euro-American) appears to some as either doubting or taking away from the reality of climate change? Does anthropology start by accepting the scientific explanation of climate change, and then look at culture after the fact? In other words, is the anthropology of climate change merely superficial when it comes to 'culture'?
-
Why we disagree about climate change - 2009
Article
-
Tutorial 10 - CT 2 itemsWhy does it make analytical sense to include children in anthropological studies of social processes? What are the arguments against 'the anthropology of childhood'?
-
The Development of Meaning: Ontogeny and Culture - 1996
Article
-
Intersubjectivity as Epistemology - 2009
Article In 'What is Happening to Epistemology?' a special issue of Social Analysis (vol. 53. 2), edited by Christina Toren and João de Pina-Cabral.
-
-
Essay #1 Readings - MH 12 items
-
1. What did the Kula Ring demonstrate about the cultural construction of economic life? 6 items
In addition to the readings assigned for lecture 1, the following supplementary readings might be useful for you:
-
The kula: new perspectives on Massim exchange - , 1983
Book "Introduction" digitised
-
The Gift: the form and reason for exchange in archaic societies - 1954
Book Available in the Library and as an e-book
-
The Kula in Society and Politics -
Chapter Chapter 6 in 'Politics of the Kula Ring: an analysis of the findings of Bronislaw Malinowski'
-
inalienable wealth - 1985
Article
-
2. Are markets cultural constructs? Discuss with reference to TWO ethnographic examples. 6 items
In addition to the readings assigned for lecture 4, the following supplementary readings might be useful for you:
-
Economic man: the anthropology of economics - 1974
Book Chapter 1, "The Meaning of Economy" digitised.
-
Introduction: Transnationalism, Localization and Fast Foods in East Asia -
Chapter Pp. 1-38 in 'Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia'
-
-
Essay #1 Readings - RD 20 items
-
3. What are the strengths and weakness of a cultural materialist approach within social anthropology in general, and specifically with reference to the topic of food taboos? 10 items
Discuss using the readings for Week 4, Topic 1: Food Taboos, Pollution and Prohibition. See also the following:
-
Purity and danger: an analysis of concept of pollution and taboo ; with a new preface by the author - 2002
Book Chapter 3, 'The Abominations of Leviticus'. (Digitised copy available in Tutorial 4 readings above)
- an abridged version of Chapter 3, 'The Abominations of Leviticus' appears in the following book:
-
Reader in comparative religion: an anthropological approach - , , 1979
Book pp. 149-52.
-
Land Animals, Pure and Impure -
Chapter Digitised copy available in Week 4, Topic 1 readings (via link above)
-
Animals in Lele Religious Symbolism - 1957
Article
-
Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse -
Chapter Also reprinted in W. Lessa & E. Vogt (eds), Reader in Comparative Religion (1979), pp. 153-66.
-
The traveller-gypsies - 1983
Book Chapter 6. (Digitised copy available in Tutorial 4 readings above)
-
Animals Are Good to Think and Good to Prohibit - 10/1969
Article
-
The use and abuse of biology: an anthropological critique of sociobiology - 1977
Book Esp. ch. 1
-
4. If Berlin and Kay's work on Basic Color Terms (1969/1991) undermined the doctrine of linguistic relativity, describe the way in which recent research has raised doubts about the universality of col 10 items
See reading for Week 5, Topic 2: Colour, plus the following:
-
Basic color terms: their universality and evolution - , 1969
Book Section 2, "Evolution of Basic Color Terms" is digitised
-
Chapter
-
Hanunóo Color Categories - 1986
Article
-
An introduction to social anthropology: other people's worlds - 1999
Book Esp. pp. 23-28. See Section 3 reading list (Introduction) for digitisation of chapter.
-
Yélî Dnye and the Theory of Basic Color Terms - 2000
Article
-
Basic Color Terms (a review) - , 1971
Article
-
Revisiting Basic Color Terms - 2000
Article
-
Colour Classification in Ndembu Ritual -
Chapter See Section 3 reading list (Topic 2) for digitisation of chapter.
-
-
Essay #2 Readings - SH 11 items
-
5. Do Western theories of aesthetics adequately describe the artistic accomplishments of non-Western peoples? Discuss using ethnographic examples. 5 items
-
Now I know only so far: essays in ethnopoetics - 2003 (electronic book)
Book Chapter 2 [Available in the Library and as an e-book]
-
Book 'Preface' and 'General Introduction' digitised. See whole work for specific examples.
-
-
6. What is writing and how do Amerindian forms of graphic communication challenge traditional notions of writing? Discuss using examples from at least two different Amerindian peoples. 6 items
-
"Introduction" in Graphic Pluralism: Native American Inscription and the Colonial Situation - , 2010
Article [Introduction to special volume of Ethnohistory (Vol. 57, Number 1, Winter 2010)]
-
Reading Anishinaabe Identities: Meaning and Metaphor in Nindoodem Pictographs - 2010
Article In: Graphic Pluralism: Native American Inscription and the Colonial Situation, Special volume of Ethnohistory (Vol. 57, Number 1, Winter 2010), pp. 11-33.
-
Presidential Lecture: Discourse and Authority in Histories Painted, Knotted, and Threaded - 2012
Article In: Ethnohistory (vol. 59, no. 2, Spring 2012), pp. 211-237.
-
The code of kings: the language of seven sacred Maya temples and tombs - , , , 1998
Book Extract from Chapter 1 digitised. See whole work for specific examples.
-
-
Essay #2 Readings - TC 12 items
-
7. How can anthropology mediate between indigenous and scientific knowledge? 6 items
-
The anthropology of climate change: an integrated critical perspective - 2014
Book Available in the Library and as an e-book
-
Climate cultures: anthropological perspectives on climate change 2015
Book Available in the Library and as an e-book
-
Fielding Climate Change in Cultural Anthropology - , ,
Article
-
Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change - , 2007
Document
-
-
8. What is culturally at stake for Pacific peoples facing rising sea levels? 6 items
-
Sea Change: Island Communities and Climate Change - 2012
Article
-
Eco-theological Responses to Climate Change in Oceania - , 2016
Article
-
Climate change and tradition in a small island state: the rising tide - 2015
Book Available in the Library and as an e-book
-
Climate Change and the Perspective of the Fish - 2009
Document
-
